Industry Links

PALO ALTO, CA, USA—Perfect Commerce, Inc., a supplier of enterprise supply management (ESM) software and services, recently announced a Smurft-Stone investment in its product technology. According to the software manufacturer, Smurfit-Stone Container Corp. is "rolling out" Perfect Supply Manager to its corporate and site procurement organizations across its approximately 300 mills, plants, and facilities across North America. Says Perfect Commerce: "This enterprise roll out builds on a highly successful pilot project that reduced sourcing cycle times by 20 to 30 percent, drove standardization of business practices for those events, and helped deliver cost savings of 10 to 20 percent."

Perfect Commerce says, in order to save money on "highly negotiated" products and services, Smurfit-Stone sought a sourcing system that could scale to its level of sourcing complexity as well as one that supported best-practices development and end-user self-service. "Strategic sourcing represents a huge opportunity for time and cost savings, digitization, and process improvement," says Mark O'Bryan, Smurfit-Stone's VP–procurement. "Perfect Commerce will enable us to seize this opportunity throughout our distributed operations."

Since first piloting Perfect's enterprise solution in August 2001, says Perfect Commerce, Smurfit-Stone has sourced events for several major capital asset projects successfully, ranging from packaging materials, raw materials (such as starch and resin), and even services for roof repairs.

According to Perfect Commerce, Smurfit-Stone's procurement team will use Perfect Supply Manager to guide end users in the field as they automate and manage the complete sourcing process, including event design, requests for information or quotations, bid evaluation and negotiation, and contract management with its suppliers. "Perfect Supply Manager, reports mfr., "will enhance communication between decentralized mill operations and corporate procurement, increase the quality of information shared during sourcing activities, and provide Smurfit-Stone sourcing professionals with the tools needed to improve their end-to-end sourcing process."